April 23, Sunday, 8:15PM, 2006
The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes
directed by the Brothers Quay
co-sponsored with The Independent Film Festival of Boston
Location: Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Square, Somerville, MA

This live-action feature by the Brothers Quay, masters of avant-garde stop-motion animation, is an enigmatic fairy tale about sexual tyranny and the repetitious compulsion of trauma. Infusing the film's imagery with their trademark gothic sensibility and complementing it with a haunting soundscape, the directors produce an eerie ambiance of sinister dreams and grotesque eroticism while ingeniously incorporating their animation into the narrative structure. Suggestive of Freud's writings on the uncanny as well as the early work of executive producer Terry Gilliam, this macabre fable is a visual cabinet of curiosities, in which each drawer possesses a different bloodcurdling secret.

The beautiful opera singer Malvina is spirited away to the island insane asylum of Dr. Droz, a psychoanalyst and music aficionado. Meanwhile, the genius piano tuner Felisberto Fernandez arrives on the island at the behest of Dr. Droz, who has hired him for a mysterious duty: to clean and tune the doctor's bizarre musical automatons for a special performance. While contemplating the advances of Droz's seductive housekeeper, Felisberto discovers the captive singer and plans to save her. But Droz will stop at nothing to make sure his malevolent vision comes to fruition. --Kristina Aikens